by Dale Mayer
A man.
Dead.
But the dead man was important.
Even so, Stefan could feel his energy zapping his system. He had to travel home soon. If he could just get a closer look at the man's face…
Pulling on the last of his reserves, he dove lower until he was lying parallel above the body and gazing straight into the dead staring eyes.
Stefan hit the end of his rope. He was sucked back in time and space through the wind and the clouds and the sky – back through a long black tunnel – and slammed back into his body that still lay on his bed.
Chapter 14
Sunday early evening
Tabitha curled into a tight ball of energy. She had no idea what to do or how to do it. She could go back to Tango and potentially back to her body – unless she'd died the last time.
Only the connection to the tiger went both ways, and now she was attached to her existence here and fearful for her life – and the tiger's life. How could Tabitha leave her alone?
She'd heard the men's discussion about drugs. Were they talking about the effects of her calming energy on the tiger or had someone else entered the warehouse and attempted to drug the tiger? She didn't feel anything new, but Tabitha had felt a wash of wrongness in the tiger's body since she arrived. The body felt different from Tango's, but then he was tame, happy, and healthy. Trinity – Tabitha had named the tiger following her grandfather's naming scheme of all pets starting with T's (and, damn, she hadn't wanted to ask about her own name) – was wild, hurting, and on death's doorstep.
Trinity was tired. Hurting. Scared. Almost to the point of giving up.
Tabitha rocked back and forth in her virtual space, wishing to see a way forward. The tiger was a victim here. But then so was Tabitha. She hated that feeling. And her awareness was so much stronger because the tiger's feelings were bleeding into Tabitha's emotions, amplifying them, making Trinity’s feelings Tabitha's. This amplification connected her to the tiger in a big way – they were both victims.
Her mind stalled.
Victim. That's what she felt like. That's what she'd become. That's what she was.
Because she'd slipped into the victim mentality.
She was letting the circumstances dictate what she could do. She was reacting...not acting. She was letting the situation get the best of her. Instead of doing something constructive about it.
That had to stop.
Trinity slowly eased her legs down to stretch out in front of her while Tabitha's mind wrapped, shifted, and reformed the new reality of the situation. There was no way in hell she was going down as a victim.
Not in this lifetime. Unless her life was already over. But she couldn't go there. She didn't dare. She had to figure out how to take back control. And that started at the emotional level. Then the mental, and finally she knew she could manifest intent in her physical life.
She took a deep breath and released it. Then took another. As she started to feel better, she realized that her energy was uncurling, stretching away from her, relaxing too. Her energy was changing as her mental shift grabbed hold. She smiled as the tension slipped down her spine and into the ground, opening her consciousness.
Fear had sunk so deep inside Tabitha, she hadn't recognized it when it crept up and took hold. But it was there, almost rank with its stench.
She shone a little light on her fears, letting them breathe, letting them swell before releasing it to the ether.
As she released all that in front of her, she could see them. See what she'd held deep inside, hidden even from herself. Things that were clogging her soul. Things that were holding her back from the next step. The hurts were all there too.
Tobias's death.
Her grandfather's death.
Tango's impending death.
Tripod's eventual death.
Her uncertainties over Exotic Landscape.
So many regrets. So many fears. And along with those, so many fears of what was to come. So many hurts she'd hidden from herself. So many losses and wishes and dreams. She was like a water slide, with all these memories and dreams and thoughts gushing from her out of this big pipe – as if the process was releasing everything that had held her back. It was what she needed to do to lighten her soul and let it breathe again.
Let her soul live. And stretch. And thrive.
And act.
She waited, feeling the power surging through her. She didn't need to be confined in here. She could go anywhere. Any time. Including to her body.
It was fear not reality that had held her back.
Now she knew what to do.
She needed to go to the source. And that meant the tiger's source.
Tabitha pushed gently into Trinity's memories, easing into it, one gentle pulse at a time. She had the names Fez and Timothy, now she needed the faces. Tiger vision was different and she'd seen the general outline of the men, but not their features with any clarity.
She wished she could transmit the images to Stefan. He'd be the one to translate them to paper. But there was no guarantee she could.
Damn it, where was Ronin? She needed him. In so many ways. More than she'd understood before. She sent out another gentle pulse into the old tiger's memories and watched as the curtains of the big cat’s mind opened slightly. Tabitha was taking a dangerous chance doing this. She didn't want to open the memories too wide or too deep. If Trinity had many traumatic instances in her life, reliving them could bring back the same shock and stressors as she’d experienced in the wild. In fact, given the state Trinity was already in, any number of these could kill her.
And most likely Tabitha along with her.
Taking a mental step back, she approached the next layer of energy with love, sending out warm caring thoughts to tamp down the fear. She wanted the memories to be like an old black and white movie. Something distant and hard to relate to.
Not something that would cause Tabitha's heart to race or her adrenaline to kick in.
Trinity lay at one end of the cage. She'd responded well to Tabitha's suppression energy and that had calmed her aggression, eased her fears, and worked to save her from feeling pain. It was easier on them all this way. But dangerous too, especially if the men assumed it was safe to approach the tiger – if that were to happen, Trinity's instincts would override Tabitha's work and, given the opportunity, she'd attack her captors.
Tabitha knew Trinity would never be happy in captivity. She could live on a reserve to the end of her days, but the caregivers would never be able to let down their guard. Tabitha also knew she might be able to do some energy work to help Trinity adapt; she certainly helped the animals on her reserve that way. Anything that helped the animals live a healthier and happier life worked for her.
Humans could learn a lot from them. So could she.
As that thought crossed her mind, the layers of Trinity's memories pulled back and she watched a stream of disjointed images ripple past at super speed. She tried to slow them down but nothing she did worked. The film raced by in a never-ending stream of hunting, feeding, mating, birthing. Then the film started to crackle as if it was breaking. It got deeper, darker, and more sinister. A loud pop sounded so close that Tabitha could feel the sting as something bit into her hip. She gasped and could feel the burn and shock and terror Trinity experienced during her capture as if it were today. Trinity had survived a lot in her life, she was old for a wild tiger, but she hadn't been expecting to run from a gun. She hadn't even seen that coming.
When she'd woken up, Trinity had been caged.
Tabitha watched the rest of the bad-quality film, searching for something usable. From inside the darkness, she could hear sounds in a distance and understood the animal had been kept sedated. She had no idea for how long. To Trinity, with the fear and rage rippling through her, it seemed endless. She'd been kept drugged for far too long. Tabitha understood the need from the poacher's point of view, but for the tiger...it was an endless myriad of pain and fear.
T
abitha had to wonder where Trinity came from. Not that it mattered, but someone had obviously gone to a lot of trouble. The fur on the tiger's paw was a dirty gray and black. Tabitha hadn't had a clear view of the rest of her body. She could be a white Bengal. White tigers were rare in the wild. They were legal to own and breed in many parts of the U.S. but the color came with its own set of problems. White tigers, with their distinctive recessive gene, were so inbred that the breed had multiple problems.
But what if this wasn't a white tiger? What if she was a rarer variation? What if that slate gray on her front leg and paw were the same all over? What if she really was a famed Maltese tiger?
There'd been reports since forever of blue tigers, but confirmed sightings were few and far between and none in the last several decades. Then there was a rare black tiger species – although her coloring didn't go that far.
But if she was any one of these rare breeds, she should have been treated much better. The world would want to know that one of the species had been found in its natural habitat and it would be protected – as were all extinct and endangered animals. And the penalties for smuggling it would be stiff.
From the memories she'd accessed, she knew this tiger had been captured in the wild.
If it was the breed she suspected, it was one of the last of its kind.
That made Trinity even more special. It made her...a rare find.
***
"A floater?"
Stefan's tired voice sounded flat, disembodied. Ronin had observed the famed psychic on just enough calls to realize he'd probably just climbed out of another vision.
It was late on a Sunday. He should be back at the hospital, not still at the office, but he'd needed to check in. There'd been a surprising number of people here. He tried to focus on Stefan's conversation.
"Do you have a location?" Ronin asked.
"Portland, but nothing more detailed."
But a city was good. If the floater was related to Tabitha's problems. "Does this guy have something to do with the tiger?"
"I'm hoping so." This time there was a thread of humor in Stefan's voice. "It could be another case though."
Ronin paused to digest that. So, a body somewhere in Portland… he thought, but could they count on that, considering he didn't get a good look. And maybe or maybe not related to Tabitha's predicament. Couldn't these psychics make it easy for once? "Have you any idea how little help this is?" he asked in frustration
"No. And I don't want to know. Thanks." Now his voice was sounding positively cheerful. "I just pass over the information. It's your problem now."
Ronin pinched the bridge of his nose and took a mental step back. Since meeting these people, he'd learned that nothing ever fit together in a straight line...at least not until they solved a case. Then the puzzle pieces fell nicely into place. But the path getting there was beyond twisted. The stuff they found out in the pursuit of their answers made him realize a long time ago that most people lived their nice happy lives blind to everything around them. When it came to the area of psychics, there was a whole other world just under the surface.
"Please tell me you have something more."
"Check your email."
And he hung up.
Ronin groaned. He'd turned off the notifications on his phone a long time ago, hating to be always attached to the damn thing. He walked back to his desk and opened his laptop.
The email program took a moment to load before he saw Stefan's email. With an attachment. He opened the attachment and was reminded, Stefan was an artist!
The scanned black and white pencil sketch might as well have been a photograph. The lines around the man's face were so well blended, the shading so realistic that if he hadn't understood Stefan's talent, he'd have assumed he'd taken a picture of the dead floater.
Behind the first sketch was a second one, of the surrounding buildings.
Bringing them both up on the big monitor beside him, Ronin studied the images. He sent them to the printer and waited.
He'd pick them up in a minute. The old rundown buildings along the edge of the river were interesting. The buildings had no identifying names or numbers. He had no clue where the buildings were located, but he thought some of his buddies might.
Ronin knew a couple of techs that might be able to help. He whipped up a few emails and sent them off with a note saying he was on his way over to talk to them. But first, the printer.
The big printer was in the outer office. Beside the coffee. Several of his buddies were standing around and talking when he entered the room.
He searched for the printouts. The one of the river was there, but not the floater. Crap. He'd have to go back and reprint it.
"Hey Ronin, is this yours?" Brent held up the floater's image. "Where the hell did you get that?"
"A contact." He deliberately kept Stefan's name out of the discussion. "Quite the sketch, isn't it?"
"This is a sketch?" one of the men asked.
"Looks like a photograph."
"Of a dead guy."
"Yeah. He had to have been there to have seen it in this kind of detail." The paper was passed from hand to hand as they studied the artistry.
"Anyone recognize the dead guy?" Ronin asked. He glanced up at their faces, and damn if there wasn't a shadow crossing Geoff's face. "Geoff? Do you?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Damn if I know. The guy's face is all distorted."
"Yeah, he's a floater."
"We've had a few of those come in the last month. None around this guy's age that I know of though."
Brent said, "How can you tell what age?" Brent peered more closely. "Guy could be anywhere from twenty to sixty."
"The water is never nice to flesh, but this guy doesn't look like he was in all that long. I've seen worse."
With that announcement, several of the guys grabbed their coffees and headed back to their desks. Brent handed the picture back to Ronin. "Good luck."
Ronin watched him walk away. He would check on the recent floaters from the morgue and check with the lab techs to see if they could help improve the image.
Ten minutes later, he knew that wasn't going to work.
"Sorry, but the guy's features are too distorted," said the lab tech. "We can set up a facial recognition scan and run it through the database looking for someone, but it's a long shot."
"Run it anyway. Besides, I have a second problem for you. Is there any way to figure out this location?" He handed over the second picture.
They fell into a discussion about the minor landmarks in the picture. Finally the lab tech shook his head. "Sorry, Ronin, but there's not much to go on here. No skyline. No physical landmarks. It's just a few old buildings."
"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of." Ronin picked up the picture and walked out.
What was the chance that Stefan could return to the same place and find some landmarks this time? Possibly keep his eyes open, for heaven's sake.
***
4:30 am
The warehouse was steeped in darkness. And silence.
The darkness was a bit too dense to see much. Fez wanted to open a window, maybe turn on a light. Something.
Tonihgt this place was giving him the creeps. He'd come in and relieved the idiot, Keeper, about a half hour ago. Keeper had been asleep when Fez arrived. Now, alone at 4:30 in the morning, Fez wished he'd left Keeper asleep and just stayed here to keep watch over the tiger.
He'd never been afraid of the dark before. Neither had he been afraid of being alone.
Tonight, he had to admit to both.
He was tired and chilled with a powerful need to constantly look around. He just needed a good night's sleep. Keeper had slept through his shift – lucky bugger. Sleeping wasn't exactly the best way to stand guard, but it sure as hell helped pass the time.
Happy with his decision, he curled up in a far corner of the warehouse where he had a good view of the front entrance and the tiger's cage and closed his eyes.
Every so
und was amplified in the dark. Somewhere in the far side of the warehouse he heard the scurrying of little feet. Probably rats. The damn place was infested with them. The dampness from the river brought them in. At least it was dry in here. And a few rats didn't bother him.
It's not as if there were any animal control or health inspectors that came around this corner of the world, and if they did stop in, there was always money to grease the wheels to make them go away.
He struggled to get comfortable, shifting his fat bottom on the cement floor, wishing there was at least a chair to sit on. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.